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Thursday, 19 January 2017

The Castle

The first 24

The last time I was in Los Angeles was
for a couple of hours between flights on the way home from a gig in
New Zealand. I had just enough time to meet my old friend Jay Leggett
in an LAX coffee shop. We caught up, made each other laugh, hugged
and then I was back through passport control and on my plane home.
The time before that was many years earlier, but also involved Jay.
We stayed at his place for a few days. He showed us the sights,
bought us dinner, took us out, drove us around, and generally really
loved playing the host and showing us his Hollywood. He helped us
make memories I couldn't forget even if I tried.

So, as I sat in my shuttle bus, Eduado
the driver cruising us from the airport to the strip, I remembered
the times I'd been here before, and smiled, and allowed myself a
little cry. If Jay hadn't died, he would have got such a kick out of
me being invited to perform at the Magic Castle. He would have been
psyched, and would have planned things for us to do, he would have
kept me out late, he would have been proud of me. As my week rolled
past, I heard his voice in my ear almost constantly, providing a
running commentary of teasing and enthusiasm. So this week was, at
least partly, for him.

But lets track back for a moment. Yes,
I'd been booked to perform at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. The
premier venue for the magical arts. No, I'm not a magician. But
glossing over that little technicality, it was a hell of a compliment
of a booking, and I was ridiculously excited to go.

I gawped out of the window of the
official Magic Castle airport shuttle bus, I remembering what LA
looks like. All hazy and golden. The grey ribbon of freeway flanked
by signs that once were brightly coloured, but quickly faded in the
sunshine. They jostle for attention in a way that, were they newer,
would be ugly. At least to my jetlagged eyes, their age gave them
some kind of beauty that by rights they shouldn't have had. Thats,
possibly, one of the things places like LA are good at. Seeing the
beauty of an ageing sign seems like the same kind of thinking that
started people appreciating old movies, or unfashionable fashions, or
diners that have seen better days. The unabashed love for the flotsam
and jetsam of fairly recent cultural history. When I was in my
thirties, my dad teased me mercilessly for wanting to revisit my
childhood neighbourhood, telling me that I was “A little young for
nostalgia”. That was, of course, bullshit – loving something from
the past isn't about how far back it happened, it's about why it
means something to you. So, that's Los Angeles, perhaps – Not too
young for nostalgia.

Eduado dropped me off at the Castle, I
collected my apartment keys, dumped my stuff, splashed some water on
my face, then headed right back out to do two shows. Endorphins beat
jetlag by knockout, and pretty soon I was sitting in my dressing
room, massive picture of a particularly intense Houdini staring down
at me, with a little sheen of sweat on my face, looking at myself in
the mirror, grinning like an idiot. Listen, I'm sorry to all the
other venues I've ever played, but in nearly thirty years of shouting
tricks at people, the Magic Castle has the best audiences I've ever
worked to. For a start, they're there to see magic, so they don't need any convincing
when a variety act steps on stage. Secondly, the main show at the
castle is a hot ticket. You have to be a member, or know someone
who's a member, and book in advance. All the shows sell out, so
they're super excited to have managed to get a seat. Lastly –
they've had a drink. Now, sometimes, obviously, having an audience a
little booze-enhanced is the last thing you want, but when that
audience is already made up of people who love magic and variety, and
are chuffed to have made it there – well, the drinks just help them
slide a little bit into unbridled childhood glee. They laugh, they
gasp, they clap, and I smile.

I headed straight to bed after my last
show, and thanks to my timezone-addled soul, got a solid couple of
hours of unconsciousness before the invisible jetlag demon slapped me
wide awake. There was no getting back to sleep, so I threw on my suit
and decided to wander around outside and see if I could find a good
vantage point from which to watch the sunrise. At about five thirty
in the morning I found some hills, which turned out to be Runyon
Canyon Park. It was pitch black, but there was a lady with a dog, and
some young hikers, which inspired feelings of not-danger, so I
followed them. I trekked along a sandy path, up and around and up
some more, while the sky everso slowly got less black, and more inky
blue. Palm tree silhouettes started to become visible overhead, and
occasionally, through the leaves, I'd get a glimpse of the pinpoints
of light from the otherwise unlit downtown, like showgirl glitter on
the floor of a dark dressing room. Up and around and more up. Until
there was no more path, just a bench and a sheer drop. I stood,
feeling safe by making sure the backs of my legs were touching the
bench. The city was spread out in front of me, shiny. The sun
starting to throw some haze through the overcast sky, so I could
finally see my surroundings. I breathed slowly and deep, letting my
head pan across the view, and heard myself say out loud “Well.
Damn.”

Then I went and got some breakfast.

On the way down I passed a homeless
woman. All her belongings piled high in a shopping cart. On first
impressions, she looked big – fat, even – but as I got closer to
her I realised that she was actually painfully slight, but she was
wearing all of her clothes. Hat over hat, jacket over jacket over
jacket. In her hand she had a rectangular pocket pack of tissues,
which she held to her ear like a phone, or a radio. Her head was
tilted back, staring at the sky, unaware of anything else. As I
passed her, I heard what she was saying into the pack of tissues. Her
eyes darting around the sky above, she implored “I'm here. I'm
waitin' Ready to go. Right here. Ready for you”. As if waiting for
a flying saucer? Or a rapture? The poetic heartbreak of her mental
illness killed me.

Suits and hats

The only thing I planned to definitely
do while in LA was to go to, what I had been reliably informed, was
an amazing hat shop. I like a hat. So I strolled down to Melrose, to
find Hollywood Hatters. On the way, I passed a grizzled looking guy
in a hoodie, who, when he saw me, grinned broadly and said – almost
sung - “WELL LOOK AT YOU ALL IN A SUIT LIKE A MAN IN A PLACE! WELL
ALRIIIIGHT!”. Seriously thinking about making that my new promotion
slogan. “Mat Ricardo: All in a suit, like a man, in a place.
Alright.”

The internet had told me the hat shop
opened at 11, but when I was there at noon it still wasn't open. So
Sal, the owner, who had been delayed, arrived to find his first
customer in the process of sending him a grumpy email about opening
hours. I'm good at making first impressions.

Hat shopping is hard. You have to try
on ALL THE HATS. SEVERAL TIMES. Sal was very understanding of that,
and after a decent amount of hat sampling, and with his expert
guidance, I bought some beautiful hats. One of the styles I bought,
Sal told me, was a favourite of Leonard Cohen, who used to live in
the neighbourhood, and would get his hats there. Nice.

Close your eyes only when you have
to

The rest of my week was a blur of work
and looking at stuff. The audiences were faultlessly delightful,
attentive and appreciative, but even with that said, three shows a
night, arriving at seven and not leaving until past midnight is hard
work. Fun work, but hard work. I made sure to plan to go do something
every day, as well. It'd be a waste of a city to just sit around in
your apartment waiting for the evening to begin, so I started to tick
off my list of diners, architecture, shopping and views.

One morning I woke up feeling a little
black dog-ish, so I decided I'd spend the day looking at beautiful
things. I got the metro downtown, and checked out the beautiful Union
station – a spectacular art deco masterpiece that, if it was in
Britain, would almost certainly have been gutted and modernised by
now, or sold off to a hotel developer. But no, here it was, exactly
as it had been since 1939, all polished marble floors, angled wooden
beamed ceiling, class and style out the wazoo. And it was quiet.
Busy, but not loud. Maybe however late for work you are, it's just
impossible to be angry and stressed when your commute takes you
thought such a cathederal.

While I wondered through the downtown
area, hunger reminded me to tick off another diner from my list, and
this one was a doozy – The Nickel Diner. As sung about by TomWaits. Made famous by its bacon maple glazed donut. On this grey day
it glowed warm and welcoming, fairy lights in the steamed up window,
the shapes of happy, chattering, eating people inside. A mix of local
office drones, hipster scum like me, and crusty old geezers. The
happiest of happy places. I walked in, sat at the back so I could
watch the room, ordered breakfast from the uber-friendly staff, and
felt my belly and my soul refill. One day I'll write that book about
my favourite greasy spoons all over the world, right? This'll be in
it.

The black dog was whimpering and
retreating, and a visit to The Last Bookstore, and then the Bradbury
Building, finished it off, and put it back in its basket, asleep and
beaten.

Most of the rest of my daytimes were
spent going out on expeditions with my camera. I like to walk, always
have done, and even in LA, it's mostly possible, at least between
taxi and metro journeys. Bought some sunglasses at a lovely vintage
store in beautiful downtown Burbank (and if you don't know why I said
it like that, then shame on you), just around the corner from the
actual water tower where the Animaniacs live. Not sure if they were
there, they may have been elsewhere, engaged in hijinks.

Milt

One night, between shows, a dapper,
older man made his way back stage. I knew who he was immediately.
Every big time magician who has seen my act has told me - “You
gotta meet Milt Larsen”. In 1963, he and his brother Bill founded
the Magic Castle. It's his house. He's a genuine bona-fide Hollywood
film, TV and stage legend. But there's something else. Before I was
the tablecloth guy, He was the tablecloth guy. Every American movie or TV show
you've seen it done in, chances are it was his hands doing it. The
reason you know the tablecloth trick – the reason why, when I bend
down and take hold of the edge of the cloth, everyone knows what's
coming? That's down, in a major way, to Milt. He pushed that one
little bit of business into mainstream culture, over a career that
stretched through all of his adult life.

He grabbed my hand in a handshake. Held
on tight. Stared into my eyes. Told me how funny I was, how perfect
my timing was. Told me I had the perfect act. Already I'm shaking a
little, the voice in my head saying “You can go cry in the
dressing room in a minute”

He told me all the times he pulled
tablecloths – in cabaret shows, in movies, wherever, gave me a few
tips (“But you don't need my ideas – you're bulletproof – but
i'm 85 – what do I need them for?”), "Your act?", he said, shaking his
head and grinning, “putting it back? Never seen anything like it”

This is why I do this. I mean, one of
the reasons, but one of the big ones. I saw in him, and I think he
saw in me, that we were similar. Schtickmeisters. Trading in the
currency of gags, lines, bits of business. Both part of a lineage. In
my critically-acclaimed, and publicly-ignored, one man show
“Vaudeville Schmuck” I talked about how lonely it can be being a
solo act, but how, if you do the kind of things that I do, you're
never really alone on stage – you're accompanied by the ghosts of
all the people who helped your artform develop over the decades
before you. A family tree that you've never met.

But this one I met. No ghost. Real and
giggling. He shook my hand at least six times in the course of an
eight minute chat, and I didn't want to let go any of the times.

He told me that he hoped I liked it
here. I told him I certainly did. He told me that he knew London is a
long way away, but that he hoped I'd come back many times. I told him
I hoped so too. I felt that my check-in luggage might be heavier now,
the weight of one passed baton.

Last 24

On Sunday morning I strolled up to the
weekly Melrose Trading Post – a fantastic and huge outdoor market
in the grounds of Fairfax high school. $3 to get in, which goes to
help fund school projects, and then you're in among hundreds of stalls
selling vintage stuff, handcrafted stuff, beautiful things, and
low-class crapola. It's great. Had a felafel sandwich that was the
size of two and a half city blocks. Bought some badges from an
English guy who'd moved there thirty years ago. “What got you
here?”, I asked. “Would you believe, a woman?”, he replied,
resigned to the cliché. He asked what I was doing there, and I
explained that I was doing a comedy act at the Castle. “You look
like a comedian”, he said. I asked if that was a good thing or a
bad thing. “Well”, he said, “It's a good thing if you're a
comedian. Not if you're not...”

One more lap of the stalls, a chance to
overhear a customer tell a stallholder that he could “Sell the gum
off the bottom of a shoe”, and I was on my way back to my apartment
and then across the street to do my last night of shows. And that's
where was when I wrote this, sat in my dressing room sucking on a polystyrene cup of diet coke, in my costume, headset mic digging into
my ear. One show in, on a three show night.

And then I closed my laptop,
straightened my tie, and went up into the wings for the second
show of my last night. The compere, the lovely Kerry Pollock, gave me
his usual killer intro, and onto the stage I swaggered, my eyes
immediately falling on the unmistakable form of comedy genius Larry
David, sitting a couple of rows back, dead centre, grinning up at me.
My brain immediately split into two parts. The main part slid right
into doing my act, getting laughs, being sarcastic, threatening to do
tricks, my usual kind of schtick. The other, smaller neurological
lump just provided me with a n inner monologue of “*Is* is him?
Yeah, it totally fucking is. It's Larry David. Watching you. Right
now. It's happening right now. Don't fuck up. Calm down. Stop
thinking about Larry David. Who is in the audience looking at you.
Right now.” etc..

I didn't fuck up. Afterwards he stuck
around, shook my hand, told me how funny I was. I got another laugh
out of him by telling him how offputting it was seeing him from the
stage, and how dare he. He shook my hand again. I told him what an
honour it was to meet him. He told me how great my act was. I went
back to the dressing room and got dizzy. Actually dizzy. Like all the
blood had flowed out of my brain and whatever part of your physiology
deals with having a really really good day. I had to check with Kerry
that all of that had actually happened. It had. Bloody Los Angeles
being such a cliché. Such a fan-fucking-tastic cliché.

And then I was done. Prop case packed.
Suit folded. One last double scotch with magicians at the bar with
the ghost that plays the piano (Long story), and now I'm sitting on a
plane on my way home. All in a suit like a man in a place. Alright.